Anyone can attend our in-person meetings in their city or one of our online meets. Prior registration for each meet is required; however, there are no monetary charges for attending any BYOB meets. All the registration details for each BYOB meet are sent via our newsletter as and when each meet is organised. You can subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated. The newsletter is sent out about once a month. Please monitor your spam folder and other inbox tabs so you don't miss our email.

We have meets about once a month at our active chapters. Our newsletter is the best way to stay updated about the dates and times of each meet. Unfortunately, we cannot contact you individually via chat/DM/etc. to inform you about meets. You'll have to keep an eye on your inbox for the newsletter and register ASAP, as spots are filled out quickly on a first-come-first-serve basis.

We are very sorry about this. Unfortunately, all the organisers of this book club organise the meets on an unpaid, voluntary basis. We are basically short on time and resources. We also want to keep this a free-to-join space for readers - and we also do not want there to be eligibility criteria to join. Given these challenges, yes, our meets are high in demand and are booked out quickly. In case your email inbox is filtering out our newsletter, you can do the following: Report as Not Spam Move to primary inbox Mark as important Create a filter to star the email or mark it as important You could also sign up with your personal email rather than your work or school email. Additionally, if you'd like to help us out - you can volunteer your time.

At BYOB, each person brings a book of their choice (pertaining to the theme) and gives the other members a brief book review. A short discussion on each book usually follows. We are the original book club that came up with this unique format which is now followed by many other book clubs in India. We love other clubs - there aren't enough book clubs in the country/world yet :)

Yes, we have WhatsApp groups for each chapter, and no, you cannot join it unless you have actually attended a meet for that city. We'd first like to meet you before adding you to our WhatsApp group :) Our focus is on readers being able to meet each other in real-time, real places and discuss books.

Yes, you can bring ANY book to a BYOB meet that is marked as a "general" or "no theme" meet. We prefer books that have been published by traditional publishers. Avoid books that you have already spoken about at a previous BYOB meet. If the meet description mentions a theme such as "Indian books" or "Non-fiction" then please stick to the theme very strictly.

No, please do come. However, If you have to change the book at the last minute, do inform us so that we can update the book list. Here are the reasons why we ask you to register with a book: To weed out non-serious participants, curious onlookers, etc. If you're a reader, you should at least be able to name a book and an author AND spell them correctly. Having the name of your book and author in advance reduces the amount of work the volunteers put in to prepare the book list for that meet. Preparing book lists can actually be very annoying - try it once, and you'll never skip this step again! For meets with themes, we do a strict check on whether your book sticks to the theme or not. It is a real bummer when somebody talks about a time management book at a "sci-fi" meet just because they didn't spend a few extra seconds reading the meet description carefully. Perhaps the most important reason to read a book thoroughly before discussing it at BYOB is so that you can avoid giving out SPOILERS. Honestly, if you've read this far, and you feel your reasons for not being able to finish reading the book are benign, and you can reasonably avoid giving out spoilers, please DO come.

No. The "Bring"-ing is in the figurative sense. Although we love to see softcovers and hardcovers at the meet, you do not necessarily have to go out of your way to buy a physical copy for the sole purpose of attending a BYOB meet . If you have read the book digitally on a Kindle or listened to the audio version, you can still speak about it at a BYOB meet. Note: BYOB does not encourage or support the piracy of books, including the distribution of ebooks (PDFs etc) in a way that does not support the author or publisher.

No. The "your own book" is meant in a figurative sense. It does not mean you have to write a book or talk about a book you have written. "Your own book" is meant to contrast with the usual system of discussing only the book prescribed by the book club. At BYOB, you can bring any book of *your choice*.

Yes and no. You can speak about a book you wrote only ONCE at our meets. For the sake of fairness (to other authors), we ask you to bring an ADDITIONAL book not written by you. If you want to talk about your book again and again, then we'll need you to go through the formal route of marketing/publicity for your book (in other words, we'd like to get paid for the promotion of your book).

Congratulations on writing a book! We'd love to hear about your book and possibly feature them in our newsletter. At the moment, we are not doing any single book discussions, or author chats as our focus is on the readers and the activity of reading.

If it's in our capacity to do so, we'd love to collaborate. Please email nidhi @ bringyourownbook.org with FULL details, including the type of collaboration and timeline (with exact dates).

YES! We are always looking for enthusiastic and self-motivated readers who have a few hours to spare every month to help us organise the meets! Whichever city you are in, apply here and help us grow the community of book lovers!